Filipino lawyer wins Ramon Magsaysay award
Filipino lawyer wins Ramon Magsaysay award
Reuters, Manila
A Philippine lawyer who has helped recover nearly US$700 million stashed away in Swiss banks by late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was awarded Asia's equivalent of the Nobel prize on Monday.
The Manila-based Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation named Haydee Yorac as one of this year's seven winners for her work in government service as the leading lawyer searching and recovering ill-gotten Marcos wealth.
Marcos and his wife Imelda are suspected of plundering up to $10 billion during his two-decade rule that ended in a peaceful "People Power" revolt in February 1986.
"Ms Yorac is being recognized for building the people's confidence in government through service of exceptional integrity and rigor and her unwavering pursuit of the rule of law in the Philippines," the foundation said in a statement.
Yorac, 62, is the feisty head of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, the state agency tasked with recovering the Marcos's ill-gotten wealth.
She first served in government in the late 1980s as human rights commissioner before becoming elections commissioner, head of an anti-corruption agency and finally head of the agency hunting the Marcos billions.
Under her leadership, the agency made the single largest recovery of Marcos money in 18 years after the Philippine Supreme Court awarded $658 million from a Swiss account and held in escrow at the Philippine National Bank, to the government last January.
Yorac, who will receive $50,000 for her award, lives with her sister and five dogs.
The other award winners were: - Jiang Yanyong, a retired military doctor from China who fought the deadly threat of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), for public service; - Prayong Ronnarong, a Thai farmer, for community leadership; - Abdullah Abu Sayeed of Bangladesh for journalism, literature and creative communication arts; - Filipino Benjamin Abadiano for emergent leadership, and; - Indian Laxminarayan Ramdas and Pakistani Ibn Abdur Rehman for peace and international understanding.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award was established in 1957 in honor of the third Philippine president to recognize people who show selfless service.